The bar pilot who was in control of the empty oil tanker that sideswiped a Bay Bridge tower had previously been ordered to receive extra training after he was found responsible for grounding a vessel in the Sacramento River and hitting a pylon in the Stockton port in 2009, state regulators said Tuesday.

The two incidents and training orders were detailed in the records of Guy Kleess, 61, of San Francisco, who was issuing commands to the helmsman of the Overseas Reymar tanker Monday morning when it scraped a protective bumper on a tower of the Bay Bridge's western span.

The state records also show that Kleess was involved in another grounding incident in 2010 after he was told to undergo the training stemming from the 2009 incidents. In addition, they indicate he lost his federal mariner's license from November 2010 to January 2011 because of an undisclosed medical condition.

Accidents 'very minor'

An official with the state Board of Pilot Commissioners for the Bays of San Francisco, San Pablo and Suisun, which licenses San Francisco bar pilots, characterized the three accidents involving Kleess as "very minor" and normal for a pilot who has spent years navigating the challenging waters of the bay and delta.

"The damage was hardly worth mentioning," said Allen Garfinkle, executive director of the board. "It was scraped paint."

Kleess has been a bar pilot on the bay since 2005, board records show, after spending 14 years skippering tankers for Exxon and 12 years mooring and unmooring tankers off the Louisiana coast. Neither Kleess nor an attorney who represented him in the past responded to requests for comment.

In just three days in August 2009, Kleess briefly grounded a fully loaded, 560-foot bulk carrier chugging up the Sacramento River and crashed an empty, 609-foot bulk carrier into a pylon supporting a catwalk at the Port of Stockton, the state records show. Neither ship was damaged.

State investigators found that in the Stockton incident, Kleess had not "adequately accounted for ... the effect of a slight flood current" and ordered that he complete four practice dockings with a "more experienced" river pilot.

Separately, regulators ordered Kleess to go on four "practice" runs of the Sacramento River channel after he ran aground. He completed the training in July 2012.

Tug pushed aground

In May 2010, Kleess was piloting a 620-foot tanker in the Richmond Inner Harbor when one of the tugboats strapped to the tanker was pushed aground. Kleess was supervising a trainee, who was actually operating the vessel, according to Garfinkle.

"But it's his license that is on the line," Garfinkle said of Kleess.

As pilot of the larger ship, Kleess was responsible for the mishap, Garfinkle said. Kleess was blamed for the error, but was not reprimanded or assigned further training.

No one was injured in any of the incidents and no pollution was released, according to state records.

Garfinkle said he could not discuss the details of Kleess' records, but that there was nothing that concerned him.

"He is a very experienced mariner," Garfinkle said. "They don't even get their foot in the door (here) unless they are experienced."

Kleess is certified as a deep sea master, meaning he is permitted to captain the largest boats in the world. Few captains maintain such a certification, Garfinkle said.

According to state records, Kleess suffered a medical condition as of August 2010 and was on leave until early November, when he lost his license because federal officials denied his application for a medical waiver. His appeal of that denial was apparently successful, because records show that he regained his license as of Jan. 11, 2011.

The Coast Guard has said human error is one of the possible explanations for Monday's accident, in which the 751-foot Overseas Reymar hit the Bay Bridge tower closest to Yerba Buena Island on the western span as the ship was headed out to sea. No pollution was reported.

Investigation under way

Kleess is one of 58 bar pilots in the Bay Area, and each one shepherds 150 to 200 ship movements a year. They typically earn more than $400,000 a year.

Peter McIsaac, president of the San Francisco Bar Pilots association, has known Kleess since 2003 and called him "very smart and energetic." He said Kleess graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy with dual majors in engine and deck abilities.

McIsaac said two factors that may have contributed to Monday's accident were a fast-moving fog bank and a strong current.

The association's guidelines recommend that a pilot not start a journey if visibility is below a half-mile, and officials have said visibility at the time of the accident was a quarter-mile.

The Coast Guard reported late Tuesday that an initial review of audio recordings from Monday morning revealed that the Vessel Traffic Service, which is in contact with large commercial ships on the bay, warned the ship prior to it hitting the bridge tower. It also reported that drug and alcohol tests for the pilot, master and key crew members were conducted and that the alcohol test results were negative. The drug test results were not yet available.

The Overseas Reymar set sail from Martinez on Monday morning. "We think he had adequate visibility when he left, and then it changed," McIsaac said. "In the winter, the fog is unpredictable."

Strong ebb tide

Tide tables show that the current was flowing at one of its strongest ebbs of the day when the ship grazed the bridge tower at 11:20 a.m., McIsaac said.

"It looks to me like he was trying to steer away from the tower at the time of the incident," McIsaac said.

The Overseas Reymar was the second ship to hit a tower in a little more than five years. The container ship Cosco Busan spilled 53,000 gallons of fuel oil into the bay in November 2007 after it hit the tower just west of the one the tanker hit Monday.

McIsaac said the latest accident surprised him, given what he described as an otherwise good safety record for bay shipping.